November 15, 2003. I didn't realize until I read
Libby Copeland's article in the Washington Post that St. Francis
of Assisi had appeared to pet psychic Sonya Fitzpatrick in 1994. "He said
I'd eventually be doing God's work with animals," Fitzpatrick says. "Which
is surely what she's doing right now," according to Copeland. So now this
charlatanism is "God's work"? Well, if God's work is peddling hope, then
she's doing God's work. She reveals to her audiences that because of
reincarnation pets can return. It is
interesting that she doesn't mention that that doesn't mean they'll ever see
the dead pet again or if they do that it might have them for breakfast. Even
more interesting is that Fitzpatrick has solved the problem of going on tour
without having a menagerie of pets making "a little peepee or plopsy-wopsy"
throughout the theater: She can do psychic readings from photographs
of the pets. That makes it cleaner all around. Hundreds of people pay $40
each for tickets to her petfests.

Fitzpatrick may have read Ian Rowland's book on
cold reading or she may just have picked up the tricks of the trade by
chance, but she certainly exhibits knowledge of what Rowland calls the
Win-Win situation. When she's wrong, she's right.

Sometimes Fitzpatrick is right on the money and sometimes she isn't. When
she is, the pet owners look shocked. Sometimes, if she's telling them about
a pet that "passed over," the owners cry. When Fitzpatrick isn't right, she
explains that's because the animals (which, incidentally, she can see in
spirit form swarming all over the stage) sometimes get their telepathic
transmissions crossed. But she knows just how to remedy this. For example,
she asks a woman with two cats which one was a "rescue cat." The woman says
neither was, but Fitzpatrick still feels its presence, so she asks the other
people onstage. None of them has a rescue cat. She turns to the audience. It
was a tabby that passed over, she says. "It had trouble with its teeth
toward the end." A woman in the audience stands up. It's her cat that is
transmitting thoughts to Fitzpatrick! The description is dead on, aside from
the fact that her cat is still alive. (Copeland)

Fitzpatrick has taken animalquackership
to new heights. She dispenses advice to buy her new pet food, Sonya
Fitzpatrick's Omega Natural, while doing her readings. She also explains her
unique abilities to Copeland, who, good journalist that she is, passes this
information on without any comments from a skeptic. According to
Fitzpatrick, "Animals communicate on a higher level of consciousness than
human beings." This requires her to keep switching back and forth between
sides of her brain. One side is used for talking to people and the other
side is used for getting transmissions from animals. She tells her followers
that they too can be psychic. Here's the key:

"We have electromagnetic fields running through the body," she says. "And
through the earth plane there's electromagnetic fields."

I guess that's about as sophisticated an answer as you need for people who
bring a picture of a pet to a psychic reading and pay $40 to someone who
will ask them questions like "When did you take him somewhere where he was
outside by water?"

note: Justin Higgins' letter to the editor complaining
about the pet psychic article was published by the Post. I reprint it
here:

Saturday, November 22, 2003; Page A19

The article on "pet psychic" Sonya Fitzpatrick [Style, Nov. 15] states
that the "science of telepathic communication with animals is murky." In
fact, it isn't murky at all; it is nonexistent. This article was
surprisingly uncritical of Fitzpatrick's ability, and its primary effect
likely will be to convince people that she must be the real deal.

Fitzpatrick uses techniques that self-proclaimed psychics have been
using for centuries to convince her audience that she is able to
communicate telepathically. In fact her talent is in combining guesswork
and a basic knowledge of her subject matter (in this case, animal
behavior). As with "psychic" John Edward, the worst part of her act is
that she exploits the grief of people whose pets have died under the guise
of helping them communicate with them from beyond the grave. The most
insightful statement in this piece was that "fans of Fitzpatrick are eager
to help her interpret her psychic insights."

Psychics depend on the fact that most people want to believe in their
abilities and want to be comforted by statements such as "your pet loves
you."

Unfortunately, articles such as this only further cement many people's
uncritical belief in the paranormal and help those who would exploit those
beliefs to line their own pockets.

-- Justin Higgins

November 11, 2003.George
Barna, the Christian pollster, has released the results of his latest
research, in which he claims that
morality continues to decay. Unfortunately, he didn't mean that crimes
by CEOs and other corporate executives are increasing or that terrorism is
on the rise, but that more people think it's ok to have sexual fantasies and
other such really important moral issues. Barna, like many evangelical
Christians, thinks the fact that 30% of Americans approve of homosexual sex
is a very bad sign, not because we should be more tolerant but because we
should be less tolerant.

In
Michael Shermer's E-Skeptic Newsletter for November 10, he comments that Barna
"publishes data not favorable to Christians or religion (such as the fact
that the divorce rate among Christians is just as high as it is for
non-Christians and atheists [not quite
accurate;]). This increases my confidence in the integrity
of his data." I don't question Barna's numbers or methodology, but I do
question the integrity of his data because he is very selective in what kind
of data he collects and in how he frames that data. Barna's survey tells me
nothing important about morality. He tells me about people's views of what
is acceptable to them, which is quite a different matter. Barna says things
like “The data trends indicate that the moral perspectives of Americans are
likely to continue to deteriorate,” which is codswallop. What kind of
researcher imposes his own values on the data? It's one thing to ask do
you think abortion is acceptable? but it is quite another thing to take
the data and claim that it shows a decline in morality. It is the height of
arrogance to claim, as Barna does, “Until people recognize that there are
moral absolutes and attempt to live in harmony with them, we are likely to
see a continued decay of our moral foundations.” Until people like Barna
recognize that the kind of moral absolutes they are concerned with are
smokescreens and distractions, we will continue to see a decline in
intelligent polling.

Why didn't this pollster ask any questions about
what he considers to be good behavior? Is it because he hasn't a
clue? Is good the absence of bad? You're good if you oppose abortion,
homosexuality, pornography, gambling, and drunkenness? Is that it? Oh, I
forgot. You can't have any impure thoughts, either. That's what we
used to call sexual fantasies. What about
charity?
Helping the poor? Visiting the sick? Forgiveness?

Why are evangelical Christians so obsessed with
homosexuality? Why aren't they interested in stealing and lying, especially
by corporate executives or political leaders? Why aren't they interested in
fraud, especially religious fraud by the many phony faith healers who
continue to prey upon the weak, the sick, and the old? Why aren't they
interested in preemptive murder? Instead, they're interested in whether we
approve of looking at pictures of nudes or of
explicit sex. They're more concerned about a president cheating on his wife
than they are about one who would allow his friends to steal from a pension
fund (apologies to Chris Rock). I'd say these folks have their priorities
screwed up and wouldn't know whether morality is going up or down if it
slapped them in the face in both directions.

Maybe what really irritates me about Barna's poll
is that he places me in the category of Elders, the last group on the right
when it comes to age. This has led me to use more profanity than usual.

By the way, here's Barna's evidence for the continues to decay
part of his message about morality: “Compared to surveys we conducted just
two years ago, significantly more adults are depicting such behaviors as
morally acceptable. For instance, there have been increases in the
percentages that condone sexual activity with someone of the opposite gender
other than a spouse, abortion (up by 25%), and a 20% jump in people’s
acceptance of ‘gay sex.’" According to the numbers he posts, this means that
two years ago only 10% of the population approved of gay sex and only 20%
approved of abortion. Frankly, I don't even know what it means to say "I
approve of abortion" but the stat regarding gay sex seems to me a sign our
morals are improving. We're becoming more tolerant. Maybe some day those who
keep looking to the Bible to support their fanatic interest in suppressing
homosexuality will realize that just because some wandering shepherds a few
thousand years ago stoned people to death for eating shrimp or eagles
doesn't mean we should do it too. We ought to think for ourselves.

Maybe that is what Michael Shermer will advocate in
his new book on the science of good and evil. He was
recently interviewed by
Fortune magazine about the topic. In the interview, Shermer commends "the Google guys"
because "they have these grand visions for colonizing Mars and creating a
new society somewhere. They aren't in it to make money, retire, and play
golf." He also commends Bill Gates because he "wants to end problems in
Africa. He's not building a golf course." Do I detect a theme here? An
anti-golf theme? Maybe his next book will be Good and Evil Golf. My
guess is that if we colonize Mars, the second thing we'll do is turn it into
a retirement community and build golf courses there. The first thing we'll
do is shoot anything that moves.

July 14, 2003.One of the stupidest stories
I've ever read in a newspaper appeared in today's
HeraldTribune.com (Florida). It's called "Astrologer says nation's
future is in the stars" by David Hackett. Some clown did a natal chart on
the U.S.A., using July 4, 1776 at 5:10 p.m. as the moment of the birth
of the nation. It just gets more moronic after that.
[thanks to David Martin]

Actually there was an equally idiotic article on
NineMSN.com a
couple of days ago about a witch trying to cast a spell to lure Nessie out
of the Loch.

Dressed in his white witch robes, he will make a
circle of stones and burn incense while casting a spell invoking earth, air,
fire and water.

Worse. Some jackass is going to take a movie of the whole thing.
[thanks to Duncan Gill]

March 23, 2003.Parade magazine, the
Sunday supplement that used to feature articles by the likes of Carl Sagan
but which now favors articles on natural healing and complementary medicine,
features a cover story with the teaser "Can Prayer Really Heal?" It is
described as a "report" by Dianne Hales, an author of several books on
health. The Parade cover leaves open the nature of this report: "In
the last 10 years, hundreds of scientific studies--at some of the nation's
top universities--have probed a link between health and religious faith. The
data may surprise you." But the article itself, which begins on page 4, has
a more suggestive, even if misleading, title: "Why Prayer Could Be
Good Medicine [my emphasis]." Note the weasel word "could." The teaser reads "New research
exploring the connection between biology and spiritual practice--once
derided as scientific heresy--may offer insight into how the body
heals [my emphasis]."

My main reason for calling this article bunk is not,
however, because the author weasels. No. The main problem with this article
is that is biased and selective in what it presents. You don't need to do
any studies at all to know that prayermight be good medicine. And if
the best that hundreds of scientific studies can show is that new research
may offer new insight into how the body heals, then this article is
clearly overhyped.

The article also fails to clarify what is
meant by prayer. Did the researchers in the hundreds of studies define
prayer? Did they all use the term to mean the same thing? She notes early on
in her article that a particular man and his family prayed for his recovery
from a heart attack and the man believes that "God answered those prayers."
We are to infer from this, I suppose, that prayer is a request to God. This
seems reasonable since she later distinguishes between petitionary prayer
(for oneself) and intercessory prayer (for others). But what about those who
don't believe in an anthropomorphic god who listens to requests and grants
some but not others? I'm not talking about atheists, either. Furthermore,
she mentions meditation studies in her article. But meditation is not
prayer, at least not prayer that involves making requests of a god. Should
studies that involve meditation be clearly separated from those involving
prayer?

I would like to say that I have nothing against
prayer. I used to pray in my younger days. I prayed to give thanks for what
I thought were my blessings. I prayed to God to do things for me and for
others. I even prayed for general things like peace and good will. I know
that prayer can be beneficial. It can make one feel good, especially in
situations where things are really not in your control. I also think that
those who pray to bring about good things to themselves, their loved ones,
or total strangers are affecting their attitudes in a good way. The benefits
of a good attitude are tangible and not to be scoffed at. I have no doubt
that prayer or meditation can be an integral part of some people's daily
health regime.

But I do have problems with trying to measure
something like the effect of prayer on healing. I also have problems with
writers who claim to be giving a report on an issue when they don't tell the
whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The article begins
very strangely. It starts off in common fashion with an inspirational story
about a man, his family, and how he thinks prayer cured him of a serious
heart condition. Then Hales takes a strange twist by claiming that
researchers at the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., are going to
monitor this man "to see whether his faith and prayers do indeed have a
measurable impact on his long-term recovery." If this is an indication of
what the "hundreds of studies" are like that have been done on the healing
power of prayer, then any intelligent person should stop reading the article
after this first paragraph. Anyone who thinks you will learn anything
important about the relationship of faith and prayers to health recovery by
studying one man over a period of time doesn't think. If this man dies of a
heart attack tomorrow, what would that prove? Nothing. If he lives to be one
hundred, what would that prove? Nothing. No scientist worthy of the name
would monitor a single individual in hopes of learning whether faith and
prayers have a measurable effect. I assume that the people at Geisinger have
set up some sort of meaningful controls for their study and that there will
be hundreds of individuals in the study, not just this one heart patient.
But Hales gives no indication that this is the case or that such details
might be important to the issue she is writing about.

She
just tells us that this study--whatever it might actually consist
of--"represents a new frontier for medical research." Let's hope that the
researchers are a little clearer about what they are studying than Hales is.

Hales mentions that "investigators at Johns Hopkins are studying a group of
women with breast cancer who say a meditative prayer twice daily." She
doesn't bother to define "meditative prayer." Nor does she mention anywhere
in her article that one of the leading researchers on prayer and healing
died of a rare form of brain cancer while conducting a study on prayer and
that particular rare form of brain cancer.*
It is hard to imagine anyone having more prayers said for her by more people
around the world than Elisabeth Targ had said for her. But not only did the
prayers not save her life, they have not been able to save her reputation,
either. Her famous study on prayer and AIDS patients, published in the
Western Journal of Medicine in 1998, has come under fire for
not being what
it claimed to be and for committing the
Texas sharpshooter's fallacy.
Victor Stenger comments:

Targ's paper is not the only questionable study on the
efficacy of prayer that has been published by medical journals. The editors
and referees of these journals have done a great disservice to both science
and society by allowing such highly flawed papers to be published. I have
previously commented about the low statistical significance threshold of
these journals (p-value of 0.05) and how it is inappropriate for
extraordinary claims (Skeptical Briefs, March 2001). This policy has
given a false scientific credibility to the assertion that prayer or other
spiritual techniques work miracles, and several best selling books have
appeared that exploit that theme. Telling people what they want to hear,
these authors have made millions.

One of the people who has made millions by claiming prayer
heals is Larry Dossey, who is mentioned favorably by Hales. No mention is
made of his critics such as
Vic Stenger
or Robert Baker. Only
one skeptic is mentioned by Hales, John Chibnall, who is quoted as saying
that "the premise behind distant healing isn't scientific." Hales makes no
effort to explain what that premise might be or why Chibnall, a psychologist
at St. Louis University, might think it isn't scientific.

Hales claims that "dozens of studies have shown that individuals who pray
regularly and attend religious services stay healthier and live longer than
those who rarely or never do--even when age, health, habits, demographics
and other factors are considered." I would like to know the name of just
one such study. I have seen studies that have shown, for example, that
people of faith who frequently attend religious services have a
significantly lower mortality rate than those who don't. But I have never
heard of such a study that found this result when health, habits, and other
factors were considered. The Duke University study that Hales mentions is
briefly evaluated in my article on
prayer. My view is that Dr.
Koenig, who directed the study, may well have found a causal connection
between being healthy and attending religious services, but the evidence
doesn't demonstrate that spirituality causes good health. In any case, there
is a big difference between studying the effects of different lifestyles on
health and studying the healing power of prayer. The two may be related but
the relationship is certainly not self-evident.

Here is a
summary of some of the studies mentioned on the Parade
web site:

A nine-year study of the mortality rate among 21,000 adults found that
those who attended religious services more than once a week lived up to
seven years longer than those who did not.

In a study of 108 women with gynecological cancers, researchers at the
University of Michigan discovered that 93% said religion bolstered their
hopes for treatment.

Researchers at the Institute of Gerontology at the University of
Michigan, studying self-esteem in seniors, found that religious faith was
the most important factor linked to feelings of self-worth. The study of
1005 seniors over age 65, who did not live in nursing homes, found that
those with low self-esteem tended to be nonreligious.

A review of more than 80 studies on the link between religion and
depression found that people who are not involved in organized religion
are 20 to 60% more likely to experience a major depression.

These are interesting results but what do they have to do with the
healing power of prayer? The studies Hale mentions are of the same type.
However, having hope or good self-esteem, or feeling good are not what we
usually mean by healing.

On-line, Parade listed the following links, presumably so the
reader could get better informed:

John Templeton FoundationThrough the foundation that bears his name, retired Wall Street
tycoon John Templeton is a major funder of research into the nexus of
spirituality and science. Learn more about the foundation’s many programs
and awards.

It is not surprising that none of these links offer anything
skeptical about the studies of prayer and healing. But, if the reader wishes
to see the other side, read my article on
prayer and the articles I
link to there, which I will post here: